The Andes Mountains are much taller than plate tectonic theories predict they should be, a fact that has puzzled geologists for decades. Mountain-building models tend to focus on the deep-seated ...

The interiors of rocky planets and moons tend to be pretty hot compared with their surfaces. This heat, which can be caused by a number of sources — such as tidal stretching and compression, the ...

The emergence of plate tectonics in the late 1960s led to a paradigm shift from fixism to mobilism of global tectonics, providing a unifying context for the previously disparate disciplines of Earth ...

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Plate tectonics is the means through which mountains are formed. The Baird Mountains in Alaska’s ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The Andes Mountains are much taller than plate tectonic theories predict they should be, a fact that has puzzled geologists for decades. Mountain-building models tend to focus on the ...

Around the Balkan Peninsula, the African plate is sinking beneath the European plate. A piece of deeply submerged African crust resurfaced 40 million years ago far away from the sinking zone. How this ...

Movements and pressure occurring between three major tectonic plates in the subduction zone near Sabah have been identified ...

The first direct evidence of how and when tectonic plates move into the deepest reaches of the Earth is published in Nature today. Scientists hope their description of how plates collide with one ...

A handful of ancient zircon crystals found in South Africa hold the oldest evidence of subduction, a key element of plate tectonics, according to a new study published in the open access journal AGU ...